How Scent Becomes Memory
There are certain scents that stay with us. Sometimes we know exactly why. A fragrance can remind us of a person. The smell of rain can bring back a moment we haven’t thought about in years.
Other connections are harder to explain. A scent can simply feel fresh, grounding or familiar before we’ve found the words for it.
Why Scent Can Feel So Immediate
Our sense of smell is closely connected to the parts of the brain involved in memory and emotion. It’s one reason a familiar scent can bring back a memory so vividly, along with the feelings associated with it.
The same fragrance can remind one person of somewhere they’ve been and feel entirely new to someone else. Over time, the scents around us become connected to the people, places and moments in our lives.
Translating an Intention Into Scent
That relationship between scent and feeling helped shape the Symmetry Collection. Each fragrance began with an intention, and from there I thought about what that intention might feel like in scent.
For Nº 1, For New Beginnings, I wanted something fresh and open, with a sense of possibility. Nº 3, For Feeling Grounded, needed an earthier quality, with cedar, sandalwood, patchouli and incense giving the fragrance depth.
Nº 9, For Peaceful Endings, began with a more specific image. I kept coming back to rain falling over rose petals, something quiet and fresh at the close of a day. That image eventually became part of its intention: dusk, the soft fall of rain, and the sense of one day ending before another begins.
The notes help create those impressions, but sometimes it’s the composition as a whole that brings a feeling or image to mind.
The Memories That Come Later
Once a fragrance becomes part of someone’s home, it begins gathering associations of its own.
It might be there through dinners with friends, the first weeks in a new home, or the ordinary routines of a particular season. We may not think we’re making a memory at the time. Later, that familiar scent can bring it back.
That’s part of what makes fragrance so personal. A scent may begin with one meaning, but the memories attached to it become entirely our own.
